


Shelter

by astradanvers



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Kalex, Kara/Alex, Prompt Fic, Soulmate AU, Supergirl Secret Santa Fic Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 07:50:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8970364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astradanvers/pseuds/astradanvers
Summary: Humans and Kryptonians have marks to identify their soulmates but for Kryptonians the soulmate bond works just a little differently.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seaunicorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaunicorn/gifts).



> This did not go even remotely the way that I planned for it to. Anyway, I hope you enjoy :)

Kara stretches lazily, one arm reaching for the other side of the bed, tangling in bunched sheets instead of finding warm skin. She sighs upon finding that the other side of the bed is just as empty and her exploration had indicated. “Another morning left alone,” she murmurs before rolling over to face the window and curling in on herself.

The same scenario has been occurring over and over for going on three months now. She'll go to sleep nestled safely into the arms of the woman she loves, her soulmate, and she'll wake up utterly alone and the whole thing will be ignored in the light of day but when night falls they're right back where they started from. The whole pattern of events is beginning to drive her a little mad. She sighs once more, uncurls from her spot on the bed and slowly rises.

“Another day,” she murmurs, heading through the doorway separating her bedroom from the rest of her apartment. As she steps into the living room she stops cold, the entire room is wrecked. She feels panic begin to set in, why wouldn't she have called for her? That's when she remembers.

Her powers were blown, they'd gone to the bar and gotten smashed, both of them. They'd stumbled into Kara’s apartment sometime near three in the morning and collapsed into bed, curling close to one another. Judging by the lack of headache Kara would say that her powers have returned, except when she tries to hover there's nothing. She rushes to her bedroom, phone to her ear before she can blink.

“J’onn,” she says as soon as the click of an answer sounds, “J’onn, I think Alex has been kidnapped. I need you at my apartment, please.”

“Kara,” J’onn says but Kara hears the whistle of wind around him, “calm down, tell me what's going on.”

Kara draws in deep breaths, panic still clouding her mind, the same way it did when she was a teenager and still adjusting to Earth. “Alex,” she manages to say, “my place.”

“On my way,” J’onn says and Kara is positive she hears a break in the sound barrier as he flies.

The adrenaline coursing through her system should have jumpstarted Kara’s powers but when she tries to see through the wall all she sees is a painting she did of Alex years ago. She sinks down to the floor, fear gripping her heart in a way it hasn't since she was thirteen years old. The only time she's ever felt this absolutely drained of her powers was when Alex accidentally said her mark, unaware of what it was or what it could do, hell Kara hadn't even been sure herself at the time.

“She used my mark,” she murmurs quietly, “it's why I didn't hear.”

“Kara,” J’onn says, stepping through the balcony doors. His eyes rove over the destruction before him, “What happened?”

Looking up to him, arms curled tightly around her knees and tears gathered in her eyes, Kara shakes her head, “I don't know,” she looks around again, “whatever it was though Alex didn't want me to hear. J’onn,” she says quietly, “I have no powers, she took them.”

“What do you mean she took them, Kara?”

“There’s something that no one knows about Kryptonians,” she says quietly, “I’m honestly not even sure Clark knows.” She looks up to J’onn, “Kryptonians believe in soulmates, always have. On Krypton there was a word, known only to the two soulmates that would allow them to switch bodies. The word worked only for them even though often times it was a rather common word. It works a little differently here.” She closes her eyes, remembering, “The word, our word,” she says quietly, “came to Alex in a dream, a dream of my mother oddly enough. She said it as she woke from the dream,” a small smile curls her lips, “and then she put a hole through the ceiling of our room.”

“Alex is your soulmate?”

“Yeah,” Kara mutters, she reaches over lifts the picture with the broken frame from the floor by her side. “Alex is my soulmate. And when she says my mark it gives her my powers. Here on Earth, with a human soulmate, a Kryptonian mark allows your soulmate to gain your powers.”

“So Alex has your powers?”

“Yes.”

“But you could say the word and get them back.”

“And possibly make her fall from ten thousand feet in the air,” Kara says simply.

“Can you track your powers?”

She shrugs, “I’ve never had to try, I know Alex can track me. That’s usually more how she finds me than any of the tech she claims to use.”

“Will you try?”

Kara closes her eyes, thinks of the night before when she’d fallen asleep curled into Alex, of all the nights before. She can feel it, something that’s always there at the back of her mind, always tugging at her, the pain that pulls against her heart that she pretends doesn’t exist. “She’s in the warehouse district, the abandoned one on the south side.”

“Let’s go.”

“I’ll be no help to you there, J’onn, not without my powers.”

“But if Alex is in trouble you can take your powers back.” He reaches out for her, “Where’s the Kara who would do anything for Alex?”

“She’s terrified of what it means that Alex chose to take her powers instead of letting her wake up and defend them.”

“So come find out,” he says and Kara looks out to him and understands what he’s saying, what she’s known all along. Alex needs her and now that she’s had her moment to break down its time to stand up and fight.

“Let me change,” she says simply and heads for her bedroom to put on her supersuit, saying every prayer to Rao she can think of that Alex will be safe when they find her.

* * *

 

Kara considers the word before she scrawls it across the page, joining the hundreds of others that surround it. Teaching her new sister Kryptonese is not just a way for them to bond but it's a way to keep her culture alive. This one word won't matter in the long run, she sighs, won't matter ever again. 

Reaching over she flips the bedside lamp off, thankful once more that Alex can sleep with the light even though Kara doesn't really need it. The dark still bothers her if she's surrounded by it for very long. She rolls over in her bed, curling up on her side to stare out the window, “Goodnight, Mama, Papa,” she says quietly, just as she does every night before she sleeps. She closes her eyes, pictures her parents that very last moment she saw them just before she closed her eyes in her pod so that she wouldn’t see what happened to her planet.

A soft gasp on the other side of the room makes Kara’s eyes snap open and she sits upright instantly, Alex’s soft whisper from across the room reaching her easily, “Throniv.”

The feeling envelopes Kara immediately. It’s like there’s a piece of her that’s suddenly missing, like she’s lost something. The familiar feeling of panic begins to overwhelm her but it doesn’t come with her hearing becoming too enhanced or her seeing out into space. Instead she can barely hear Alex across the room from her and she can’t see her hand in front of her face. Before she can say anything however a crash sounds from across the room. Quickly she mutters the word again, “Throniv,” she’s already out of the bed as she says it and super speeding her way over to catch Alex as she falls back through the hole in the ceiling is easy.

“What the fuck was that?” Alex demands once Kara has settled her back on her bed.

Kara however is pacing, fretting and worrying over the new turn of events. “This shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t be possible. Doesn’t make any sense.” She shakes her head, “I just don’t get it. That’s my mark. She said  _ my  _ mark.”

Suddenly Alex is in front of Kara, “Kara,” she says gently, already the only person able to get through to the younger girl when she falls into a panic attack, “hey, Kara, look at me. I’m right here, talk to me.”

“Soulmates,” Kara says simply at first, then she shakes her head, “I just don’t understand. I didn’t think I’d have a soulmate now that I’m on Earth.”

Suddenly Alex gasps loudly and Kara whirls to face her immediately, finding that the other girl has fallen into a seated position on the side of her bed. “Soulmates?”

“Does Earth not have such a thing?”

Alex shakes her head, “No, no, we do,” she shakes her head, “its just I’ve never,” she rolls up her right sleeve, I’ve never had -” She stares at her arm, at the series of foreign symbols across her wrist, in the handwriting of the other young woman in the room with her. “That’s never been there,” she looks up at Kara, “not before,” she tilts her head, “the dream.”

“What dream?” Kara questions, just the smallest bit of excitement clouding her voice.

“Just,” Alex shakes her head, “give me a minute.” Nodding Kara slips out of her own bed and pads her way over to Alex’s, sinking down beside the older girl before holding out a hand, smiling when Alex grasps it gently. The dark haired girl fiddles with the younger’s fingers, “All my classmates got their marks in elementary school,” she shrugs, “I’d just accepted that I wasn’t ever going to get one.” She looks over at Kara, “I can’t, we can’t be soulmates, Kara,” she says, “we’re sisters.”

“Alex -”

“Just,” she shakes her head, “no. We’re sisters,” she says again, knowing that’s what her mother has been drilling into their minds for the past year and what she’ll continue to drill into their minds for the foreseeable future, “we can’t be anything more than that.”

Kara sighs but finally nods, having learned that when Alex says something in the tone she’s using now that nothing will change the other girl’s mind, “Then that word,” she says, “the word you said when you woke up, and its translation,” she motions to her notebook, “it's in the book. You can’t say those words because if you say them then the same thing that just happened will happen again. You’ll gain my powers. Apparently that’s how the Kryptonian soulmate bond works here. On Krypton, soulmates would switch bodies, apparently here you will gain my powers and I’m powerless.”

Slowly Alex nods, “Okay,” she nods again, “okay, we can do that.”

* * *

 

Kara is clinging to J’onn’s neck, chin resting on his shoulder as she looks down at National City speeding by below them, “There,” she says while pointing to an abandoned warehouse. She can feel the pull of something deep inside of her drawing her towards the building. “Alex is there.”

J’onn nods and bypasses the door, dropping them directly into the building through a skylight, careful to take the brunt of the impact. When he lands its to find Alex held in a cage, for all intents and purposes, a soft green glow radiating from the bars, “Kara,” she says, voice weak, the weakest either J’onn or Kara has ever heard it, “get out of here, both of you.”

“No,” Kara murmurs, rushing towards the door of the cage, foregoing taking her powers back. She looks to J’onn who grabs the lock on the door and pulls it, snapping the metal with his super strength.

“Trap,” Alex says as Kara moves forward, scooping her into her arms, as easily able to carry the older woman without her powers as with her powers.

“You really should listen to her,” a cold, distinctly female voice says from behind them and Kara turns to look at the woman stepping into the room. “She’s only trying to save you. Heaven only knows why she’d bother trying to save a  _ monster _ such as yourself.”

Kara glares at the woman before her, “Lillian Luthor, I presume?” she questions, “My cousin has told me an awful lot about you,” she tilts her head, “and your son.” She smirks, “How is Lex? Enjoying prison,” she chuckles hollowly while lowering Alex back to the cold concrete floor, “Oh that’s right, you wouldn’t know. He can’t have contact with you, with anyone.”

The older woman sneers, “Arrogance doesn’t suit you, Supergirl.” She gives a smile of her own, “Of course you aren’t so super with my glowing green playthings around, are you?”

Looking down at Alex, Kara makes a quick decision, “Look, just let her go, let them go,” she says, motioning to J’onn as well as Alex. “If you let them go, I’ll stay. I’ll take my powers back and I’ll stay.”

“Kara, no,” Alex demands from her arms.

Softly Kara traces Alex’s cheek with her thumb, “I need you to be safe,” she says quietly. “This is the only way I can do that.” She looks back to Lillian, “Let them go, and I’m yours.”

The other woman smirks, “I think you’ll find that both of you are mine anyway,” she says, motioning to wall, which slides away to reveal Eliza and Jeremiah bound to chairs.

“Eliza, Jeremiah,” Kara murmurs quietly, arm circling Alex to keep the other woman from running to them. Her eyes travel back to Lillian, gaze hard and cold, “What do you want?”

“To show the world that cavorting with aliens will only ever lead to death for all those involved.” She smiles, “And your dear little soulmate here,” she says, looking at Alex, “is going to be of the utmost help,” she finishes as someone snatches Alex from Kara’s grasp. “Once we install this,” she says, holding up some kind of chip, “with the flip of a switch or the utterance of a word, she’ll kill all those she loves.” She laughs, “Won’t it be lovely to see.” She tilts her head, “Especially considering her own father created it.”

Alex and Kara both look to Jeremiah to find the man looking back at them with his lips twisted into something between a frown and a smile. “Clearly you don’t know my father too well,” Alex says, pushing herself into a more upright position against Kara’s side. She tilts her head and Jeremiah gives an imperceptible nod, “Zhor.”

The chip in Lillian’s hand gives a small  _ pop  _ and she drops it instantly as it ignites into flame, “See Jeremiah never makes anything without a failsafe,” Kara says, “and unless you know him well enough, you’ll never know what the word to activate it is.” Kara presses her lips to Alex’s temple, “Now.”

“Throniv.” Before anyone in the room can blink Kara has slammed a fist against the kryptonite lights, smashing them before they can drain her like they had Alex. As the glass containing the kryptonite shatters Kara swings around, cape flaring out to cover Alex, shielding the older woman. Two guards start towards Kara but J’onn snapps them both around and into one another. A burst of laser vision to the chip at Lillian’s feet has it exploding, tossing the woman hard onto her ass.

The woman doesn’t even attempt to move, so caught up in shock that she nearly misses J’onn collecting Eliza and Jeremiah. Alex is cradled in Kara’s arms and Eliza is in J’onn’s with Jeremiah clinging to the Martian’s neck as Lillian speaks, “Going to leave me here, Supergirl? Oh what a mistake that would be.”

“Afraid she left me behind to handle  you, Ms. Luthor,” a new voice says from above the ground and the woman looks up to find Superman hovering above her. “You’ll be joining your son behind bars where you belong.”

Kara doesn’t hear Lillian’s response, doesn’t wait around to try and hear it, instead flying up and away towards the DEO with the intention of having Alex checked out before they head home. “Were Mom and Dad okay?” Alex asks, voice shaky in a way that Kara’s never heard it.

“They seemed fine. J’onn will take them to the DEO which is where we’re headed, the doctors there can check them out. They’ll check you out too.”

“Kara -”

“No,” Kara says firmly. She looks down at the woman in her arms, “No, Alex, we aren’t doing this now. I’m not having a conversation with you about why we can’t be soulmates because we are. You are Alexandra Danvers and you are my soulmate, you have been my soulmate since the moment that I met you. So I am going to take you to the DEO and they are going to check you out and make sure that the woman at that horrible fucking place didn’t do any damage to you and then you and I are going home so that you can rest.” She closes her eyes for a moment and then starts off flying again, “Tomorrow,” she says after another twenty minutes, “tomorrow we will talk about how we are no longer sleeping safely curled together at night and then ignoring what we are to one another come morning.” She leans forward and presses her lips to Alex’s, “I love you, Alex, I’m not ignoring it anymore.”

Alex nods slightly, “I love you too,” she says quietly, tucking herself closer to Kara.

* * *

 

Kara shifts slightly as sleep slowly begins to slip away from her mind. She stretches out blindly, eyes still closed, until her finger brush softly against warm smooth skin. Smiling she slides her hand over the soft curve of a hip beneath her touch, curls her arm around the waist of the person beside her and pulls the slightly smaller form at her side against her chest.

A soft chuckles causes her to crack one eye open, “Good morning,” Alex says quietly, stretching up to press her lips lightly to Kara’s.

Kara smiles into the kiss, leaning further in, drawing Alex ever closer, “Good morning, Mrs. Zor-El.”

Alex hums, “I love it when you call me that.”

“Mrs. Zor-El,” Kara says again, leaning in for another kiss. She feels Alex snuggle closer to her, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Alex says quietly before slipping back into a light sleep.

Kara presses a kiss to her temple, knowing soon they’ll have to get up and begin getting ready for the day. Eliza and Jeremiah will swoop into the house in a few hours, ready for their first Christmas as a reunited family, not to mention Kara and Alex’s first Christmas as a married couple, something that they’d decided they wanted sooner rather than later after they’d wasted so many years.

She nuzzles against the back of Alex's neck, pulls her closer still and closes her eyes, just a small nap won't hurt.  Especially considering the surprise she has in store for all of them by the time it comes down to presents. 

Kara nuzzles in deeper, her arms tightening that much more around Alex as she hides her smile, already feeling the flutter of excitement and nervousness curling around her stomach, adding to the weight of the new life just beginning there.     
  
Now if she could just keep it all a secret until then.

**Author's Note:**

> kryptonian words  
> throniv = shelter/shield  
> zhor = heart


End file.
